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EBUP34: Discover the Secret of Life -6- Living In a Prodigal Universe

Eric Butterworth Unity Podcast #34

Eric Butterworth Sunday Services — Discover the Secret of Life -6- Living In a Prodigal Universe

The word “prodigal” also means lavish, generous, abundant, profuse, bounteous, limitless, boundless, affluent, luxuriant, inexhaustible, and so on. Almost antithetical to the “prodigal” application we within the parable of the Prodigal Son. Just ease your mind, we’re not talking about wastefulness and extravagance, we’re talking about abundance, affluence, the lavish, generous, profuse manifestation of the universe as it is in support of us.

In our quest for the secret of life, we discover that abundance is the law of nature. Nature is lavish, extravagant, and beautiful. An even more exciting insight, there’s a legitimate royal abundance for every living person. Because you are, we say, a child of God, you might say in terms of the universe, but you are an outforming unfoldment of the universe. You are the universe expressing itself as you.

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We’re considering today another in our series, “Discover the Secret of Life”. It seems that there are so many secrets. Why can’t they all be revealed, I wonder? A secret is simply an inner meaning. It’s an insight. You know the secret, and, as we say, you have the hang of it. You can experience it.

Today we’re going to deal with an aspect of our study of truth that is so vitally important. Its name is “Living in a Prodigal Universe”. Right off, the word “prodigal” is a problem for many of us, because it has so many meanings. You may remember the parable of the Prodigal Son. This prodigal demonstration was complicated, wastefulness, reckless, extravagant, intemperate. That’s not what we have in mind today.

That’s what makes the English language so difficult for people coming to the language for the first time. Those of us who speak English perhaps can’t understand how difficult it is when you come from a language where a word means what it means. We have many meanings of the same words. At least in some languages, like the Chinese, the words vary their meaning according to the tone of voice. In English it isn’t so. You can say “prodigal” any level of voice, any level of intensity, it still means many different things.

The word “prodigal” also means lavish, generous, abundant, profuse, bounteous, limitless, boundless, affluent, luxuriant, inexhaustible, and so on. Almost antithetical to the “prodigal” application we within the parable of the Prodigal Son. Just ease your mind, we’re not talking about wastefulness and extravagance, we’re talking about abundance, affluence, the lavish, generous, profuse manifestation of the universe as it is in support of us.

In our quest for the secret of life, we discover that abundance is the law of nature. Nature is lavish, extravagant, and beautiful. An even more exciting insight, there’s a legitimate royal abundance for every living person. Because you are, we say, a child of God, you might say in terms of the universe, but you are an outforming unfoldment of the universe. You are the universe expressing itself as you.

“Affluence” means “free flow”, centered in the universal flow. We experience an inner direction, creative activity, which is always potentially our support. There’s a great deal in the study of truth, the widened approach to metaphysics, on the teaching of prosperity. Unfortunately, much of this has been based upon quieting the inquisitive instinct. The emphasis is on cars, and houses, and baubles of all kinds. The word “free flow” means the flow of the universal substance.

Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom in its righteousness, and all these things should be added.” The things come too when we get ourselves in tune with the creative flow. Unfortunately, the way the message of truth is often expressed, other than the truth of teaching of prosperity, it implies, “Seek first to get the flow,” to get the things, to get the dollars and cents, and you will ultimately develop the rise of the Kingdom. The whole thing’s reversed.

One of the great problems of our time, which is not really resolved if we approach truth in that way, it’s what they call the “affluenza”, create loss and confusion of values and priorities. It could be said that if one is bound only in manifesting dollars and cents, we ultimately experience dollars without sense. That’s sad. I’m in complete disagreement with emphasis on money and things as the object of the study and practice of truth.

I agree with John Ruskin. What right have you to take the word “wealth”, which originally meant “wellbeing”, and degrade it and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money? As many of you know, in your contact with truth, your reading, your lectures and so forth, the word “prosperity” is often corrupted to imply gold dust falling from the skies. The word “millionaire” is often used and overworked to appeal to the inquisitive instinct. Often, dollar signs adorn truth books to suggest the the amassing of wealth is a kind of spiritual growth. I call this a gross materialization of a beautiful spiritual truth.

It’s true that there’s a royal abundance for every person. It’s true that prosperity is the divine right of every person. We got to be very sure we don’t lose our way in the process of achieving it.

There’s a great secret. You live in a prodigal universe of limitless substance. What does that mean? The word “substance” gives us trouble, because you think of substance as things you can put your hands on, that you can feel and touch. That’s not what substance really is. Substance is nonmaterial. We’re all trying to grasp the idea of this basic underlying nonmaterial essence is at the root of life.

Most of us have been conditioned by the old tradition of “God up there”. When we pray for prosperity, we unconsciously are begging for handouts from Heaven. We catch the idea that we live and move and have our being, in allness, in the basic substance of life. Sadly, there’s nowhere to go for abundance. There’s nowhere to go to get substance. It is.

Here’s a little riddle that you might ponder. What is it the fish can never find? No matter how he searches, throughout all the waters of the earth, what can he never find? Water. He can never find water because he’s in it. He’s not aware that he’s in it. It’s his milieu. What is it that you can I can never find? God. We can never find God.

Many of the religious approaches deal with trying to find God. Reach for God. Get God’s help. But, you can’t find God, because, like the fish in the water, we live in the milieu of God. If you’re looking for it, you’re looking in the wrong direction, because it’s that in which we live, and move, and have our being.

When we realize our good, we come to know that it’s not reaching up to God, not trying to get something out of God, not trying to get God to do something, to appeal with God, to supplicate God for divine help. It’s to wake up to our true being in God. Wake up to what we really are.

Let’s think a little bit about the universe. With a marvelous space probe such as this week’s Voyager sent off on a two-year trip to planet Jupiter (summer 1977), there’s not too much for us to imagine, reaching out beyond the Earth’s atmosphere to the Moon, to the planets, the Sun, the stars, and galaxies of stars, out into the far reaches of the universe, even to other universes. There’s a microcosm of universe within. The cells, the molecules, the atoms, subatomic particles within particles within particles, to a basic universal substance of which all things are formed. Realize that, all through the microcosm and the macrocosm, there’s no lack, only an everywhere-present abundance. Abundance is the natural state of things in the universe, and you’re the progeny of the universe. Abundance is the natural state of things in your life.

This basic substance is present in its entirety at every point in space at the same time. Say that again. This basic substance is present in its entirety at every point in space at the same time. God doesn’t capriciously move His substance from His storehouse up there to fill your need down here. Does God answer prayer in some kind of coming forth? “I reach out to God and He comes forth and reveals Himself to me”? God doesn’t come forth, because God is never absent. God is always totally present. You may be praying for healing, but the whole of God’s light is present as the healing presence. It’s not something that God does for you, it’s that which God is in you, always. All the time, not just when we’re telling Him that’s what He’s supposed to be.

If you know this, then you come to really know what spiritual healing is all about. Maybe praying for increased supply, for prosperity, for success in your work. But, the whole of God’s substance is present as a prosperity presence. You know this, you’re on the way to achieving prosperity in your life, but you must really know it.

The great key to the prodigal universe is that the whole of God’s substance is present in its entirety at every point in space at the same time, not just some of it. All the substance in the universe, present at any point of human need.

In order to understand this, we have to let go of the idea of quantity. Most of us think in terms of quantity, and the figures on our paycheck, money we have in the bank, the things we have around. We think of them as heaped-up piles of things which are our possessions. Sometimes, like the sad situation in San Francisco where some of the people left their homes and were not able to go back, they thought of all the things that they’d left that they would have to get along without. Because we tend to relate our life in terms of its achievements, of what we’ve amassed. Piles and piles of substance.

To understand substance, we want to think in terms of principle. One of the ways we can do this, a very poor illustration, is gravity. How much gravity does it require to enable you to jump up and down in place? Does gravity expand any of its energy in holding you to the Earth? Think of it in a large sense. Suppose four billion people in the world would all jump up and down together. Think gravity, as could be considered as anthropomorphically, would say “ouch”? “You’re expecting too much of me. I can’t hold you all down”? What’s enough gravity? Do you get the point?

Gravity is a principle, always working, omni-active, omnipresent, never depleted. No matter how much gravity is “used”, in the sense of lifting something up or putting something down, or airplanes that fly and ships that sail on the ocean, all using gravity in some way, or working within the field of gravity, but there’s no strain, no drain, no exhaustion. It could be hard for us to think of this, think all substance in that sense. But, if we want to grasp this insight of substance, we get the what I call the “aha”. That light, realization. We never have a problem with it again.

Remember that you are a creature of consciousness. We’re told as a man thinketh of himself, so is he. According to the image that you have of yourself, your feelings of unworthiness of worthiness, your sense of limitation or limitlessness, by thought you lay hold of basic substance. Your faith and creativity, you shape substance into a process that leads to money, and things, and jobs, and creative activities. We need to get the thought of limitlessness. A tremendous word, “limitless”.

That great character Mike Todd once said, “Many times I’ve been broke, but I’ve never been poor.” That’s an awareness of limitless substance, and which your life is supported. Herbert Spencer says, “You are ever in the presence of infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed.” You may experience less, but you can never be less than the dynamic center in an opulent universe. Emerson says, “You’re an inlet. You may become an outlet to all there is in God.”

Your thoughts may have been far beneath that realization. You may have been thinking of lack. You may have been thinking, as some of you were last week, of chaos in your investments, job layoffs. Turn the focus of your mind to the universal sufficiency present in every seeming insufficiency. This is the key to achieving prosperity.

When you stand in the awareness of the free flow of substance within, faith is quickened. Paul says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is quick in giving rise to creative ideas, unfoldment of work opportunities, manifesting in very real sense in another way. The coming forth from an outward manifestation to a nonmaterial spiritual essence, substance.

When you feel this quickening of the awareness of substance within, you always feel rich no matter how the market fluctuates, no matter how your bank account changes. You make wise decisions. Your mind will flourish with wonderful ideas, your hands will tingle with ingenuity. Opportunities will unfold, blessings will abound because of the feeling of abundance, which came first.

Again, you’re living in a prodigal universe in which abundance is the natural state of affairs. A lavish, inexhaustible universe. Whenever one is experiencing less than total abundance in every department of his life, total abundance, you must be blocking the flow or pushing it away. We say so often it’s important to take responsibility for your life. Assume responsibility for the conditions that happen. Not that you made them happen, entirely, but your consciousness, in some way, participates in the things that happen to you.

Whenever you’re experiencing less than total abundance, something in you is blocking the flow, perhaps pushing it away. Often we push it away because, unconsciously, we have a sense of unworthiness. That’s why I like to emphasize this word, “worthship”. One of the great needs of every person, to get a sense of worthiness. To give up the feelings of guilt, the feelings of unworthiness, the feeling of limitation that hold us apart from this cosmic flow. We can never be outside of substance, no more than you can be outside of gravity. But, you can recklessly disobey gravity. You can recklessly frustrate, limit the flow of substance.

Another thing that happens in so many of us that blocks the flow ... Someone said, “When things get tight, something’s got to give.” Something’s got to give. One of the most important realizations about this flow of substance in our life leading to prosperity, and affluence, and achieving prosperity and success, is getting a sense of giving-ness of life. A little action that I use so often is “Think ‘give’, and you will get.” Think “give”. What do you do in your work? Are you thinking the money you make? Getting success? Getting a decent salary? Getting a better job? Or, are you thinking “giving”? Every activity, every thing that you do, the words that you put on paper, the dresses you design, the products of your labors, are you thinking “give”?

The universe flows into you and through you, through your consciousness, to the degree that you accept it. As they say so often, the great leaders do, “Give way.” You give way through a consciousness of giving. That’s one of the ways you block the flow.

Lao Tsu, some 25 hundred years ago, indicating that there’s nothing new in New Thought, because this concept is very basic to the whole New Thought teaching, said, “The human spirit has its source in the divine fountain, which must be permitted to flow freely through him.” Anyone who flows as life flows has solved the enigma of human existence, needs no other power. Anything that’s evil that blocks the flow of creative action. Everything is healthy that flows with the universe.

What is evil but the frustration of the Divine Flow in terms of life, in terms of love, in terms of humanity, in terms of generosity, in terms of helping one’s fellows? We frustrate that infinite energy within us. We experience what is called “evil” or “sin”. Everything is healthy that flows with the universe. Look out upon nature. The trees in your yard, the flowers such as these beautiful roses here. Everything is healthy that flows with the universe. Identify with the flowing process that you see in the flowers.

It’s not actually accurately a related word, but I like to relate it anyway. The word “flower” sounds like the word “flow”. They’re not really related, etymologically, but it’s interesting. It’s a flowing process that flowers, as the beautiful blossom that we see before us. Everything is healthy that flows with the universe. The great need is to get into that flow, that consciousness of his flowing process from within and without.

You may say, “But when I have a financial problem, it seems perfectly natural to go out and raise the money.” Of course. You have bills to be paid, needs to be met, you do something about it. Move your feet. Do what you can with what you have. Apply yourself a little more in your work or in your effort to find work. Make your needs known to your employer or to other agencies if you’re guided. But the important thing is God can do no more for you than He can do through you. All the help of God can aid you except as it flows through your consciousness, your faith, your vision.

Before you attempt to go out there and raise money, or put pressure on your boss for an increase in salary, you get a bank that will support you with a loan, before you do any of those things, first of all, raise consciousness. This is the key. This is the relationship that you have with the universe, consciousness. Refocus your mind on that underlying, basic substance in which you live. It’s not for lack of abundance that you experience want, but for lack of the awareness of ever present flow of divine substance and the faiths that shape it into manifest form.

There’s an affirmation you can use. “I establish myself in the limitless substance of God, and I have abundance.” These words do not become true because you affirm them. That’s one of the great misunderstandings of truth. This idea of affirmations is so easily glossed over. “Just say an affirmation. Speak a word of truth, and everything’ll work out right for you.” “You speak the word enough, and it becomes fixed in your subconscious mind and causes things to happen. That’s how it becomes true.”

But, words do not become true because you affirm them. An affirmation of truth does not become your reality because you put in the words. You affirm them because they’re true. It’s not just a play on words. It’s very important. When you speak the word of truth, you’re synchronizing your consciousness with the reality of truth, creating a channel through which the mystical flow may do its powerful work through you.

But, even before you affirm the truth that, “I am a child of God. I am a progeny of the universe,” that was true, except you weren’t aware of it. You lost consciousness of it. You speak the word not to get God into the act, but to become consciously aware that God’s never been out of the act. God is substance and life all the time, the whole of God’s substance, as present in His entirety, at the point where you are.

In the prodigal universe, no one need ever have less in order that you have more. In business, in the world out there, there’s often a mad scramble for the world’s plums. There’s a tendency to get caught up in competition. It’s very subtle, but it becomes a part of our experience so often. They struggle. They’re trying to get ahead of the other person, in the fear that he will get ahead of you. You should never let this experience of competition to remain unchallenged in our nature. It’ll always be the very thing that hold from us the thing that we otherwise trying to demonstrate.

In the spiritual realm, there’s no competition. There’s no need for it. Every person has his own pipeline to the universal good. When you breathe all the air you need, you never deprive anyone else of all the air he’s able to breathe. There’s always enough in the sphere. Substance, all substance, is present in its entirety where you are.

If you sense that another is straining to get ahead of you, be sure that you don’t lower yourself to his fear vibration. Get the sense that there’s no competition in spirit. There’s plenty in the sphere for everyone. Through my pipeline to the infinite, there’s an inlet and an outlet to all there is in God within me. You might hold the thought for this person that you feel is competing with you, or you fear his competition. Say to him, “I bless you with the awareness that you are one with your own personal flow of the universe, which is a legitimate royal abundance for every living creature. You, too, are the progeny of the universe.”

We need to get the realization of what I call “entitlement”. Jesus talks about this when He says, “Come, you blessed. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The foundation of the world is the realm of spiritual law in the universe. The kingdom is that within you that is your very own inlet and become an outlet to all there is in God. In other words, claim your inheritance.

You’re entitled to the support of God’s substance in everything to which you give your mind and hands, whatever that you’re trying to do in your life. You have a project that you’re trying to undertake, something that you’re trying to manufacture or creatively manifest, it’s come through your mind. It’s a good idea. Set forth lovingly in the desire to bring about something better in your society, then you’re entitled to full support of the universe. This is entitled to constant support, the lilies of the field. You’re not manifesting it, something in your consciousness is holding it back. Don’t let yourself take the easy way out and say, “It’s because money is tight,” “Because they’re not interested in me,” “Because people are against me,” “Because they’re jealous.” Those are cop outs. You need to be able to justify them in human consciousness, not in terms of divine.

It could be said, and we need to say it, the universe owes you a living. I didn’t say the world owes you a living. That’s an entirely different matter. As a matter of fact, the world owes you nothing. That deflates your bubble, doesn’t it? The world doesn’t owe you a single thing. Not one red cent. But, the universe owes you a living. We were talking about the support, and the fundamental principle of substance. You live in it, you move in it, you have your being in it. As far as you’re concerned, at the point where you are, the universe has nothing to do but to work to support you, because you got the idea of that in your consciousness. We so long have confused this matter of “the world owes you a living” and “the universe owes you a living”. The world doesn’t owe you anything.

You are a creative expression of the universe with a responsibility to let your light shine. To justify your life by giving expression to these creative possibilities within you. In the expression, you will obviously create success experiences in life, and prosperity only because you’re fulfilling the divine flow through you, which must come first. In all the many ways in which you apply yourself in the world, the universe owes you complete support.

In your meditation times, get the idea that you’re settling the stream of spiritual consciousness, surrounded and enfolded with substance which is limitless. You move in it, you breath it, you live it into expression. It’s your constant support. Get the idea that, as Plotinus says, that, “The universe rushes and streams and pours into you from all sides when you sit quiet.” Sit quiet in the meditation time.

Then there comes a time to remember that the you owe the world a life. Get up and move your feet. Get involved. Give. Serve. Create from within, out. As long as you do, lovingly, in good faith, you become a channel for the flow of this universal substance. It’s like a water faucet. As long as the water is flowing, you’re drawing water out of the faucet, taking cupful after cupful, of water, the flow is inexhaustible. But, if you turn off the tap, the flow ceases. It’s still there, but we have to do something about it. We have to get involved, to give, to serve, to express.

It could be said that one of the big problems in life is that there are takers, and there’re givers. I feel that we always need to analyze ourself, to admit to ourselves sometimes if we’ve been a taker. Sometimes life has been on what I can get from the world, get from people. We have to become givers.

Don’t let this inference of what is often call the “commercial of the church” to assume that I’m subtly talking about giving money. Nothing whatever to do with it. Obviously, a church is involved in spiritual things, and it needs support to make itself work. That’s not what we’re talking about. That may be a channel through which your giving-ness expresses.

We’re talking about becoming a giver in consciousness. Turn your life inside-out. Think in terms not of how much you’ve given that hasn’t been appreciated, like a mother who says to a son who grows up to be a teenager and is always demanding and expressing desires for this, that, and the other. The mother will quite often say and feel, “After all I’ve given to you, what thanks do I get?”

Even though our heart may go out to that woman, to that person, may be a man or woman, wherever, the principle is, if you can say at the end, “After all I’ve given to you, and I get no thanks,” you’ve never really given. You’ve been bartering. You’ve been preparing for your future, your social security. “The day will come when my family will take care of me, after all I’ve done for them.” That’s not giving. It may be hard for us to face that, but we have to dig deep within ourself, through our motives, attitudes. Become a giver. Forget about what people say or think. Forget about whether they appreciate it or not. All that’s a part of human consciousness. Think “give”.

If you get into a giving consciousness, you give way to the universal flow, and substance, which is not material, which comes forth in you as harnessed, mobilized, by consciousness, by faith, by creativity, manifest in terms of ideas, ways, jobs, substance, all these other things are the things that are added onto when you see first the kingdom. Become a giver. Think “give”.

There’s a great deal of confusion today in our social welfare system, the democratic ideal that the world owes everyone an opportunity for secure living. How easily this gives rise to the welfare state of universal dependency on the government. Certainly, out of love and compassion, civilized society may want to ensure that every person has a subsistency, which is good. Much as you don’t want to hear this, no one should be entitled to support. I’m not saying this from a political point of view, from a spiritual point of view. Every person is an individualized expression of the creative process, no matter how circumstances have obscured the reality.

The great need is the need that’s being unfulfilled today, by and large. The great need is to help the person to know this for himself that he’s an individualized expression. That, within him is an inlet that may become an outlet to all there is in God, to claim his own entitlement from within. That’s not much help if he’s without a place to live and without money in his pocket. But, you have to begin with the principle. When the person in poverty begins to know, begins to really know that he’s the center within a prodigal universe, he’s a progeny of the whole universe’s system, in ways of personal motivation, ingenuity, and guidance, the unfoldment of opportunities, the whole universe will suddenly and progressively be rushing, streaming, pouring into him from all sides.

Obviously, this can’t be oversimplified, and we don’t have time to go into it to too great the extent, now, but it’s a very important realization. That, basically, one of the problems in our society has been that, while Man is a spiritual being, and the knowledge of his spirituality and his relationship with the universe must come through what is called religious training. Almost totally overlooked, this idea of teaching a person that he’s a child of God. The progeny of the universe. He has the whole universe in him to support him. His great need in life should not be to look outward for help, look inward for the motivation, the ideas, the love, the comfort and sustaining power, and enable him in good consciousness to go out into the world and become receptive to the kind of things that make for prosperity.

It may be difficult to see this in terms of the homeless and poor. The important thing is to start where you are, in terms of your children, in terms of yourself. Get to the realization that you owe the world a life. All of your life it should be trying to find ways in which you can, as one writer puts it, “Give yourself away.” To give away to this divine process within you.

Take a person who has an idea. It’s an idea for a product, or an idea for an article, or an idea for a poem, or whatever, an idea for a song, to actually get support from someone out there to help put it into practice, deathly afraid that someone will steal his idea. He doesn’t seem to do anything more about it until he’s given recognition for the idea. It frustrates his whole creativity.

The artists, the poets, the creative people, even the businesses people ... I always think in terms of the fact that, first of all, “They must pay me for what I have,” is one who will never really achieve his potential. Like the ballplayer saying, “I want to play baseball as soon as they put me on the team and give me contract, then I’ll begin to show them what I can do, and I’ll begin to practice and develop my skills.” It doesn’t work that way.

When you get a sense of living in the prodigal universe, you awaken a sense of fiscal responsibility for wisdom and good judgment about incurring indebtedness. Debt is one of the great problems that many people have. The consciousness of debt becomes, basically, because a person is unaware that he has the universe as his support. Some of us find out the hard way that a prosperity consciousness is not achieved on a road that’s paved with plastic. Some persons think they’re stepping out on faith when they’re simply stepping out on Macy’s or American Express.

It’s important to realize, not that one should not charge or incur debts, but he should keep himself open in consciousness to the flow of substance and the flow of wisdom and good judgment. One is in tune with the Divine Flow, really in tune with the Divine Flow, would never overstep of overspend, over-obligate himself. Whenever a person gets into financial difficulty in this way, this person’s been frustrating the Divine Flow. He needs to do something about it.

It’s not just how you spend your money, but how you think about spending money. You want to erase the image of the hourglass running out, the subconscious thought that a person often has when he’s writing a check. “This will make me poor.” When he spends money, “I have less than I had.” He’s thinking in terms of money being depleted. The important thing to get to the realization, in truth, you’re in tune with a limitless flow, which you are to administer in good judgment, and faith, and creativity.

You may have a pressing need for prosperity. The exciting insight is, you don’t have to get more substance. Get away from the idea of piles and piles and piles of substance, like Jesus feeding the 5,000. You would assume, and many, many people look carefully at the story in the Bible. “There must be a place where they describe the demonstration of all this supply.” As I said often, “Can you imagine how big the piles must be if you’re going to have enough bread and fish to feed 5,000 people? All that bread in the piles, and all that fish putrefying in the sun?” It doesn’t say that at all. There’s nothing about the demonstration of piles of substance as He lifted up His eyes and gave thanks.

Tune in on the flow of substance, which manifests in a natural, orderly way. That’s the way it works for us. Not that it comes out of nowhere, out of nothing, but it comes through a natural, orderly expression of ideas and creativity flowing through your consciousness and through your hands.

It’s important that we get the sense ... The demonstration of supply in your life doesn’t come through magic demonstrations. Many people get involved in fantasies about winning the lottery. We love to hear stories like the person who picked up a Brinks bag that had fallen out of a Brinks truck, a million dollars of small denomination bills. We love those things. Quite often we entertain that false hope. Life is consciousness. When you’re centered to the limitlessness of universal substance, things will happen. Investments will show profit. Salaries will increase. Pregnant ideas will pop into your mind. Doors of opportunity will open as a natural, orderly expression of the substance within you as you give way to it.

Remember if there’s a need, something is blocking the flow. Take responsibility for it. Get centered in consciousness that the presence that is present is limitless substance. Prosperity is a way of life. It requires practice of spiritual principles. Centering your consciousness in the universal flow. Identifying yourself as the progeny of the universe, fully entitled to full support for the work of your mind and the work of your hands. It calls for living, and working, and thinking, and believing that the whole prodigal universe of creativity and substance are present in every project of your mind and hands, living consciously in the prodigal universe.

When something comes to you, it’s so important, even if it’s just the regular flow of substance through dividends or through a paycheck, or through a retirement fund, take this check, or this amount of substance. Get yourself consciously in tune by saying something like, “I give thanks to God,” or the prodigal universe, “for the flow of this substance. I intend to keep myself consciously attuned to this flow as I put this substance into manifestation, give thanks for the good that has come through human channels. I keep myself aware of the fact, the real source in the prodigal universe.” Live consciously in the prodigal universe.

Let’s take a few moments to get still.

Remember you live in substance like the fish lives in water. It’s your milieu. You live in it, you move in it, you have being in it. You can never be outside of it. There’s never any less substance in your life than at the time of greatest affluence, only less conscious of faith. Open yourself in faith, receptivity, and love, in the spirit of service to the flow of substance in your life. Become alive and living in the prodigal universe. Give thanks that the universe will never let you down. There’s always support for you if you take time to accept it, to listen, to experience.

When you go forth in this consciousness, you remind yourself many times over, no matter how involved you get in the limitations of things out there, you’re living in substance which is limitless. The prodigal universe, lavish, generous, abundant, profuse, bounteous, limitless, inexhaustible, affluent, luxuriant, and it’s beautiful. So be it.